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How to Remove DRM from iTunes Music

Sharninder — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:06:51 +0000

iTunes is the world’s biggest online music store. It is probably also the world’s biggest distributor of DRM infested music. Even though, in the past few months, Apple has taken steps to rectify the problem, the chances of you purchasing DRM laced music from iTunes are still high.

So, what is the problem, you say? “I can still listen to all this music on my iPod/iPhone”. “I can still use iTunes to manage all my DRM music”.

DRM ( Digital Rights Management) is a term used to describe procedures which are taken to prevent unauthorized use of the media in question. So, for example, if you have music with DRM purchased from the iTunes store, you will not be able to play them on any media player, other than Apple’s. You will also not be able to convert these files to the MP3 format because Apple, under DRM, doesn’t give you the rights to do so.

But, do not despair. There are ways to get around this and we’ll be teaching you exactly how to do that in this post.

There are generally two ways to remove DRM from iTunes music. The first method, which we’ll discuss here, involves the fact that Apple doesn’t let you convert protected (DRM) music to MP3, but it lets you burn them on a CD/DVD, so that’s one way of getting the music out of the system.

The second method involves using software utilities to strip out the DRM from the music. We’ll be covering this method in a later post.

Exporting DRM laced music to a CD/DVD

Insert a blank CD/DVD in the drive and open iTunes on your computer. Select the File->New Playlist option (or press Ctrl+N). Give a name to the new playlist.

Now, the next step is to select all the files that you want to remove DRM from and drag them to the playlist that you just created.

Now that you have all the tracks you want on the CD/DVD media, right-click the playlist and select the option to “Burn playlist to Disc”.

iTunes will now present you a dialogue box where you can select the kind of CD/DVD that you want to burn. Make sure you select the Audio CD option.

iTunes should now start burning the music to the CD and it’ll let you knows once it’s finished.

Importing music from a CD/DVD

Now, select the Edit->Preferences option and under the General tab, click on Import Settings.

Select the MP3 Encoder from the drop down list and you’re all set to import the track on the Audio CD that you just wrote as MP3 files.

Remove the CD from the drive, and insert it back again. iTunes will prompt you to import the tracks from the CD to it’s own database. Let it do so and at the end of the import process, you’ll have new MP3 tracks void of any DRM.

Enjoy your DRM free music.

How to Remove DRM from iTunes Music originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Automatically Rate Songs in Your iTunes – Mac Only

Jeffry Thurana — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:06:23 +0000

In my personal opinion as both Mac and Windows users, iTunes is the best music player I’ve come across. The simple yet intuitive interface alone is enough to make me ditch other players out there. And there are many other powerful features which hides behind the simplicity of the appearance.

One of the iTunes features that I like most is the rating system. Users can tag any song with one to five stars based on their preferences, and users can sort or filter the playlist based on the rating. A quick glance at someone’s iTunes display and you can clearly tell which songs he/she likes and dislikes.

The rating system really is a great idea; but, and this is a big but (no pun intended), the bigger the song list, the more difficult for users to give rating to each and every song. Can you imagine editing 2376 songs one by one? That’s the size of a tiny part of my current song list. (And I don’t know anybody who has less than 100 songs on their list).

AutoRate to the rescue

Luckily, there’s an application called AutoRate which can help iTunes users to rate their songs. This app tries to ‘guess’ user’s listening preferences and give rate to each song automatically by looking at how often each track is played and how many times each track is skipped.

The formula uses a combination of play and skip frequency (averaged out over the life of each track), and the play and skip count. Tracks that are frequently skipped are penalised, while often-played tracks are given a higher rating.

Both the track play count and skip count are used in conjunction with the length of time each track has been in your library to determine, on a relative basis, how much you like each track. Ratings become dynamic and change with your taste in music following how you listen to your songs.

That is why you will get no rating for the track that has never been played.

The Simplicity

Before using AutoRate, please make sure that you have iTunes version 7 and above, and Mac OS X 10.5 (and above). If those requirements are met, download and install the app.

The usage is simple: you just open it, and click the “Begin” button. It will analyze your playlist, then assign the ratings automatically based on the result.

There are some adjustments that you can make via the Preferences, such as:
- which playlist folders to be given ratings to. (General)

- how would you like to set up the rating system. (Rating)

- whether to use full star or half star rating. (Advanced)

With AutoRate, my iTunes playlist has grown a little bit more mature without me having to do the hard work.

One last note, you would want to run AutoRate every once in a while to keep the rating system up to date.

Have you use AutoRate? Or do you have other alternatives of similar app? Please share using the comment below.

Automatically Rate Songs in Your iTunes – Mac Only originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How to Create An iPhone Ringtone Using iTunes For Free

Sharninder — Fri, 15 May 2009 12:50:21 +0000

The iPhone is an awesome smartphone and I’ve been in love with it ever since I got it.

The iTunes app store is just one of the many benefits of using the iPhone and it is amazing to see and use all the innovative applications being developed by third party developers.

However, if you talk about Apple as a company, they’ve had a pretty tight control over the iPhone platform and that is my only gripe with it. Apple’s control over the iPhone ecosystem is so much that they charge you to even create ring tones for the iPhone even if you have purchased the song legally through iTunes, and for a lot of people paying for ringtones is the only way to get ringtones for the otherwise excellent phone.

In today’s tutorial we’ll show you how you can create a ringtone for your iPhone for free using nothing but iTunes and a little perseverance.

To start with creating your own iPhone ringtone, open iTunes and select the song that you want to make a ringtone out of.

Right click and select “Get Info“. Go to the “Options” tab select a “Start Time” and “Stop Time” . This will ensure that iTunes will play the song starting from the “Start Time” to the “Stop Time”. Make sure that the stop time doesn’t exceed the start time by more than about 40 seconds. To be on the safer side, I usually keep the length at 30 seconds.

You can uncheck the start and stop time settings after you’ve created your ring tone.

Now, go to Edit->Preferences and in the General tab click on Import settings

And make sure that the AAC encoder settings are set to the following.

Now, right click on the song that you’d selected in the beginning and create an AAC version out of it.

You should now see two songs with the same name in iTunes but one of them would be of 30 seconds duration (or the duration that you chose for the ringtone), while the other one would be the full original song. We’re almost done now.

Select the newly created 30 second AAC version of the song in iTunes and press CTRL+C. Paste the song on your desktop (or any other folder) using the CTRL+V shortcut. This AAC version of the song will have the .M4A extension. Change it to .M4R.

Now, with the iPhone connected to your computer. Simply drag this file to the iPhone icon in iTunes.

That’s it. Your newly created ringtone should now be visible in the iPhone and you can start using it rightaway.

How to Create An iPhone Ringtone Using iTunes For Free originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Change Sidebar Categories in Finder and iTunes

Miles — Tue, 12 May 2009 22:36:00 +0000

In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through the steps you need in order to change various strings in OS X’s Finder and iTunes. The same process can be applied to pretty much any other applications.

I find Leopard’s sidebar to be a very handy place to store my most frequently used folders and as a way to access any external or USB drives I have plugged in at the moment. What I can’t stand, however, are the obnoxious capitalized categories (DEVICES, PLACES, etc.) that Apple forces upon us. Let’s change those to normal capitalization.

Before going any further, I must warn you that while this particular example is very easy, in general you should not change files in the System Folder. While working through this tutorial, pay attention to what you can and cannot change. Keep backups of the original files before editing them. Do not add carriage returns (pressing the “enter” key in the middle of a line), delete or add any type of special character (any of the following: % ^ ; / = * ), or change spacing. MakeTechEasier is not responsible for any damage you do to your system.

To begin, log in to the administrator account on your Mac and navigate to

/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj

either by clicking through the hierarchy** or pressing Command + Shift + G and copying the path from above. If you navigate manually, once you find the Finder in /System/Library/CoreServices you’ll need to right click and “Show Package Contents.”

Locate the file called LocalizableCore.strings, and make a copy of this file before you do any editing. Store it in a place you can remember (like the Desktop).

Open LocalizableCore.strings in your favorite text editor. I use BBEdit, but TextEdit (included with OS X) or TextWrangler (BBEdit’s little brother, free) will work just fine.

You’re presented with a list in which each line has two entries in quotes separated by an equals sign. On the left are the variable names used by the system. DO NOT TOUCH THESE. On the right are the strings that those variables pass to the user interface. These are what we’ll be editing.

Find the line

"SD5" = "DEVICES";

(It’s line 50)

You can change “DEVICES” to whatever you want. I chose “Devices.” You can do the same thing to SD6-SD8, but remember not to change any values on the left-hand side of the equal sign.

Save your changes and enter your administrator password when prompted. You need to Relaunch Finder for the changes to take effect; Hold down Option and right-click on Finder in Dock and choose “Relaunch” or launch Terminal.app and type in

killall Finder

followed by the enter key.

¡Viola! You now have unobtrusive sidebar categories in Finder.

Now let’s change the sidebar categories in iTunes.

Navigate to

/Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj

(Note: if you have moved iTunes to a different directory besides /Applications/ you’ll need to put in the correct path.)

Make a copy of Localizable.strings before doing anything.

Open Localizable.strings in a text editor.

The sidebar category strings are located in the lines with variable names 135.011-135.014 (file lines 189-192). Again I changed mine so they looked less obnoxious, but you’re free to put in whatever you want.

Save your changes and relaunch iTunes for the changes to take effect.

I could not figure out how to change the sidebar capitalization in Apple Mail. If anyone knows how, let me know and I’ll update the tutorial (as well as be eternally grateful).

Change Sidebar Categories in Finder and iTunes originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

TuneUp Cleans Up Your iTunes Collection

Damien — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 04:51:02 +0000

TuneUp is an application that integrates with iTunes to fill up your music collection’s metadata, album info and album arts. If you have a huge music collection and have been lazy in maintaining them over the years, now is a good chance for you to get them clean up once and for all.

TuneUp started off as a Windows-based application, but the developers have recently launched a version for Mac. I tested this application on my Mac (since that is where all my music collection are kept).

After you have installed TuneUp, you will find a new pane alongside iTunes when you open your iTunes.

Clean

Drag any song(s) into this pane and TuneUp will retrieve the songs record, metadata and album art from the Web. I have a huge library of Chinese and Latin songs and I was amazed that TuneUp is able to retrieve the respective information correctly. What is missing and what I wanted to see most is to automatically search and add lyrics to the songs, something like the LyricsMaster addon in Songbird.

The free version of TuneUp gives you a clean up limit of 500 tracks. When you drag the songs to the Clean pane, it does not add to the 500 count. Only when you save the information to your database then it is counted toward the 500 limit. Once the limit is reached, you won’t be able to get it to clean your track, unless you upgrade. If you have added the wrong information, there is also an Undo button to reverse the changes.

On the sub menu of the Clean pane is an Analyze button nicely tucked in a small hidden corner. This Analyze function scans your entire collection and compile the statistics of the number of uncleaned tracks (see left image). I have found this to be rather useless since it provides no information on which track is uncleaned. I have over 800 tracks in my collection and the Analyze feature stated that I have more than 590 tracks that are uncleaned. How am I going to identify which track is the one one that i need to clean up?

Cover Art

The cover art pane automatically scan your collection for missing album art and retrieve it the relevant album art from the Web. This is a nice little feature that can save you hours to find the particular album art. The free version only allows 50 cover art download.

Now playing

When you play a song in iTunes, the Now playing pane will fetch a list of YouTube videos that are related to the singer. Instead of loading the video in a browser, you can click on the image to play the video with in TuneUp. List of MP3 recommendations from Amazon and Ebay is also available in this pane.

Concert

Concerts scans your collection for the artists you love, then displays concert listings for your chosen location. This is useful if you are a concert lover. Not for me though.

Conclusion

Overall, TuneUp provides a quick and easy way to retrieve your songs’ metadata from the Web. If you have a huge collection that you never maintained in your life, this app can be very useful for you. You won’t get 100% accuracy for the information retrieved, but the result won’t be too far off.

Things that I don’t like

1) After the TuneUp installation, I found that the loading time of my iTunes has increased. It takes a much longer time for my iTunes to load now. I guess that the reason for this is that TuneUp needs to access the Internet to check your login credential and that really take up lot of time and resources.

2) In the Clean pane, it is stated that it works best if you drag up to 500 songs in it. Looking at the 500 songs limitation for the free version, I am wondering if this is a trick the developers use to make people like us to utilize the 500 free cleanup at one go. I have no doubt about the quality of the application, but I am not sure if that is truth when it says it works best with 500 tracks at one go. Maybe you can try it and let me know.

Download TuneUp

TuneUp Cleans Up Your iTunes Collection originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How To Purchase DRM-free MP3 From Amazon Via iTunes

Damien — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:33:11 +0000

While the iTunes store gives you access to a wide range of music and a one-click no-fuss purchase experience, it does come with a DRM restriction that prevents you from playing your favorite track on other devices. On the other hand, Amazon enables you to buy DRM-free high quality MP3 track, but you have to put in the extra effort to go to the Amazon site and search through the extensive database for that particular track. Now, wouldn’t it be great if you can combine the best of both World – search for the song in iTunes and buy the track in Amazon?

Advantageous MP3 is a mini iTunes script that is able to detect which song you are searching at iTunes store and brings you directly to the purchase site at Amazon. It is only 60kb in size and supports both Mac and Windows iTunes.

Download Advantageous MP3 for Mac here. Windows user can download it here.

Install the downloaded file.

Open your iTunes. You should see the Advantageous MP3 icon at the menu bar.

Now, go to your iTunes store and search for the song/album you want.

Click on the Advantageous MP3 icon and select Get MP3 From Amazon.

[For Mac users only] At the first run, it will prompt you to activate the GUI display at the Universal Access menu.

Check the box beside Enable access for assistive devices.

Back to your iTunes, click on the Get MP3 from Amazon again.

This time, your default browser will pop up and bring you to the album purchase page in Amazon. Proceed on to buy your MP3.

Once you have finished downloading your MP3, simply drag and drop it into iTunes to sync it with your iPod

That’s it.

How To Purchase DRM-free MP3 From Amazon Via iTunes originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)